Le Mariage 1986

Paul Guiragossian made "Le Mariage" with oil paint in the 20th century. What a gorgeous painting, you can almost feel Guiragossian building the figures up one stroke at a time, wiping away and adding, until they emerge from the ground. I can imagine him agonizing over how much detail to include. Will they look more like themselves with faces, with hands? Or is the essence of the figures, this family, this couple, captured in the rhythms of the brush? Look how the white paint is dragged down the canvas, becoming the figures’ limbs, and connecting them all to the earth below. The colors are muted, but there’s also a celebratory atmosphere here. I see echoes of Rouault, maybe even some Guston. Ultimately, painting is about intuition, not certainty. And Guiragossian seems to embrace that ambiguity, inviting us to bring our own stories and interpretations to the canvas.